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Cindy Cohn

Cindy Cohn is the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. From 2000-2015 she served as EFF’s Legal Director as well as its General Counsel. Ms. Cohn first became involved with EFF in 1993, when EFF asked her to serve as the outside lead attorney in Bernstein v. Dept. of Justice, the successful First Amendment challenge to the U.S. export restrictions on cryptography.

The National Law Journal named Ms. Cohn one of 100 most influential lawyers in America in 2013, noting: "[I]f Big Brother is watching, he better look out for Cindy Cohn." She was also named in 2006 for "rushing to the barricades wherever freedom and civil liberties are at stake online." In 2007 the National Law Journal named her one of the 50 most influential women lawyers in America. In 2010 the Intellectual Property Section of the State Bar of California awarded her its Intellectual Property Vanguard Award and in 2012 the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists awarded her the James Madison Freedom of Information Award.

Issues that Ms. Cohn currently handles

NSA Spying: Ms Cohn serves as counsel in Jewel v. NSA, and First Unitarian Church v. NSA, each seeking to stop the ongoing dragnet warrantless surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans. Ms. Cohn also served as coordinating counsel for over forty national class action lawsuits against the telecommunications carriers and the government seeking to stop the warrantless surveillance. EFF filed the first such case, Hepting v. AT&T, in 2006 against telecom giant AT&T for violating its customers' privacy.

In re National Security Letter: EFF represents service providers who have brought challenges the National Security Letter statute, which was dramatically expanded as part of the USA Patriot Act, including placing broad and permanent gag orders on providers. EFF previously represented the Internet Archive in a similar challenge in 2007, which was ended after the government withdrew the request and lifted the gag order.

CFAA Reform: Ms. Cohn works to reform the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in light of the tragic death of Internet activist Aaron Swartz.

Ms. Cohn is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School. She did her undergraduate studies at the University of Iowa and the London School of Economics. For 10 years prior to joining the EFF, she was a civil litigator in private practice handling technology- related cases. Before starting private practice, she worked for a year at the United Nations Centre for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland. Ms. Cohn also served as counsel to the plaintiffs in Bowoto v. Chevron, two lawsuits in San Francisco arising from Chevron's involvement in human rights abuses against environmental protesters in Nigeria. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the nonprofit the VerifiedVoting.org and the Verified Voting Foundation.

Past issues

California Reader Privacy Act: Ms. Cohn and EFF co-sponsored this law, passed in 2011, that requires a court order for law enforcement to access reading records held by booksellers selling to California residents.

Google Book Search and Privacy: Ms. Cohn represented a coalition of authors and publishers—including best-sellers Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, and technical author Bruce Schneier—in urging a federal judge to reject the proposed settlement in a lawsuit over Google Book Search, arguing that the sweeping agreement to digitize millions of books ignores critical privacy rights for readers and writers.

Electronic Voting: Ms. Cohn Coordinated national litigation strategy for electronic voting machines and assisted technologists and others who are concerned about the security and accountability of those. EFF's projects included assisting grassroots activists nationwide in considering and bringing legal challenges to insecure voting machines,filing amicus briefs in support of activists nationwide, including in litigation in Maryland, California, Texas, Ohio and New Jersey, assisting members of IEEE working groups, advising those engaged in the political and legal discussions on those issues, advising technologists who wished to do research in this area.

Anonymity or John Doe cases: Ms. Cohn has represented anonymous speakers in a variety of cases, including bringing In Re 2TheMart.com, which helped established core legal standards for protecting the identity of online speakers sought by civil subpoena.

Misuse of Copyright Infringement notices (DMCA 512(f)): Ms. Cohn argued the OPG v. Diebold case where e-voting machine manufacturer Diebold was held liable for sending out unfounded cease and desist notices to ISPs in an effort to stop public discussion of the flaws in its electronic voting machines evidenced in a published internal e-mail archive.

The European Parliament today formally recognized what has become increasingly clear: some European tech companies have been selling to repressive governments the tools used to surveil democracy activists.

After months of work, and spurred by an initial report by Professor Ted Byfield of New School University's Parsons New School for Design, we’re happy to report a security vulnerability fix in a product called Safe•Connect.

This week saw two disappointing decisions by two major American companies, Microsoft and Cisco, that appear to be choosing to become little tech helpers to China's repressive regime rather than choosing to be a force for good.

With protests raging throughout the country, the Syrian government is responding with deadly force. Citizens seeking freedom are relying on digital tools to organize and communicate -- so much so that the government temporarily shut off Internet access. The parallels to the Iranian uprising in 2009 are striking, and they are not lost on the Obama Administration.

For several months, EFF has been following the movement around Bitcoin, an electronic payment system that touts itself as "the first decentralized digital currency." We helped inform our members about this unique project through our blog and we experimented with accepting Bitcoin donations for several months in an account that was started by others.

Like so many others, we were stunned to learn that law professor, cartoonist, copyfighter and digital rights stalwart Professor Keith Aoki passed away earlier this week. Keith, who started at the University of Oregon then moved to U.C. Davis, was a longtime friend to EFF and one of the law professors we came to count on in our many battles for your rights online.